District #429 OKs $5.3M levy

Members of District #429 Board of Education met to pass a 2012 tax levy for the 2013-14 budget, discuss the 10-year Life Safety Survey and touch on Friday’s tragedy in Connecticut.

The tentative $5.31 million levy brought to the board in November was passed unanimously, after Superintendent Kevin Lipke explained how the estimated assessed value changed this past assessment period.

“If things stick, there’s the possibility of a slight increase based on the EAV, which looks like about a 3 1/2 percent drop and we haven’t had a drop in the EAV here in nine or 10 years. This year it dropped almost $4 million,” Lipke explained. “The assessed evaluation, which, for a tax capped county that actually benefits school districts, you have to imagine this gap between the levy cap and what the EAV is. The further that goes, the less money we get, but because the EAV went down and our cap stayed the same, we were able to levy a bit more.”

The levy was approved, as was the 2013-14 school calendar, which Lipke said was “99 percent” in line with Pontiac Township High School. The difference was the dismissal times during the time that the high school students had finals.

It was also approved to allow BODD Architectural Firm to complete the 10-year Life Safety Survey throughout all the District #429 schools. The members of the firm will take an entire day to tour each school at a cost of $21,000. Lipke said that the firm had been used in the past and is familiar with the schools. Board member Dale Larkin said that other firms charged twice as much for nearly the same amount of time it would take to survey the schools.

The principals from the schools discussed the Reader’s Workshop trip to Pepper Ridge Elementary School in Bloomington. Older classes were watched, showing a “reading to learn” process in reading, but the younger students weren’t really followed, which was a concern, as phonics is important and kids have to learn to read before they learn to write and “read to learn.” Lipke wants to discuss the program with all the teachers at the school before the program is implemented. Some of the teachers are planning another trip to anther school that implements Reader’s Workshop and focus on the younger students who are learning to read.

It was noted that the school board candidate filing deadline was moved from Dec. 24 to 26 and that the offices will now be closed on Dec. 24 instead. It was also suggested, but not finalized, to have the January, February and March board meetings at Lincoln and Washington schools and the junior high so that people could possibly tour the schools and see where the money would go to school improvements if the proposed sales tax increase on the April ballot is approved.

Page 2 of 2 - In another matter, Mike Schneeman was approved as the eighth grade boys’ basketball coach.

Lipke, the principals and the board also commented very heavily about the tragedy that took place Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The board members all wore green for the first grade teacher who sacrificed herself to allow her students the time to escape the rampage. Lipke also sent letters home to the parents of students in the school district encouraging the youngsters to wear green and white, Sandy Hook’s colors, to school today, as a way to pay tribute to those who lost their lives on Friday. Lipke also read the names of the deceased and everyone in attendance took part in a moment of silence.

“It hits home with us, even though they’re 1,000 miles away. Our kids think about the Sandy Hook kids and we just want to make sure that we pay tribute to them, the victims, the survivors and their families, and everyone that’s in school, for our kids to do that,” Lipke said. “We didn’t have a lot of the young kids talking about it. Something like this is harder on the adults. Kids are resilient but they are confused and don’t understand why it happened. That’s why we count on parents to really talk to them about it.”

He said there were a small handful of students asking questions, but he said they didn’t seem upset.

“Most importantly, they weren’t concerned about the safety precautions we have here at our schools, because they know no matter what, we’re always going to protect them. As long as they are inside the walls of our building, we will protect them every day,” he asserted.